[net.nlang.celts] From the Vision of Mac Conglinne

michael@spar.UUCP (Not Bill Joy) (07/20/85)

_ Aniar Mac Conglinne (12th Century)
  versified by Alfred Percival Graves:

    Upon a vision of amaze
    that met my eyes in bygone days
    let all be listening now
    a mighty coracle of cake
    lay ready launched on new milk lake
    well stored from stern to prow
    
    We strode on board that battleship
    twas meet a warrior crew should rip
    the great sea dragon's scales.
    Upon the monster's back she leaps
    and O, our oars' tremendous sweeps
    upstear from out his weltering heaps
    like honey, his entrails

    At last a royal fort we reached
    with custards solidly impeached
    were all its barricadoes
    we safely crossed its butterbridge
    its rubble dyke -- a wheatflour ridge
    and porky palisadoes
    
    A fortalice compact and good
    in pleasant stateliness it stood
    I opened, on my word
    a hungbeef door of priceless cost
    and then a breadcrumb crossed
    twixt walls of white cheese curd
    
    Smooth pillars of ancestral cheese
    and alternating well with these
    the sappy bacon prop
    and silver post and stately beam
    of yellow curds and mellow cream
    the roof held safely up.

  Founded on Prof. Kuno Meyer's prose rendering of the 12th century
  burlesque of this name of his _Ancient Irish Poetry_

  ..from the Celtic Review, April 1906

-michael